1 CHAPTER TEN
B'Elanna Torres peered towards the back of the shuttle as Tom steered them away from Starbase 13. It had been almost five hours since they'd rescued Janeway and Chakotay, and now that Miral was out of danger, B'Elanna felt herself beginning to relax. She settled in her seat, threw a glance at her husband. "I'm going to replicate some lunch. You want some?"
"Nah. I'm good." Tom's eyes were intent on the console before him. She could tell he was still a little anxious about leaving Miral with one of his father's friends on the starbase.
B'Elanna looked again towards the back of the shuttle. "I'm not sure if I should offer them any. You think Chakotay or skeletor back there will be in the mood for eating?"
Tom snorted a little at that. "Oh, come on, B'Elanna, skeletor?"
"She looks like a goddamn corpse, Tom. You had to see that."
"I did, but if she heard you say that--"
"She won't," Torres reassured him, nudging his shoulder. "For God's sake, Tom."
He sighed and ran his hand through his thinning hair, casting a glance behind him "It's just this whole situation. She didn't say a thing. She just sat in this cockpit the whole trip to Starbase 13 and never said a word. I don't know her. That woman... I just keep waiting to see the captain. "
"Chakotay will find out," B'Elanna said confidently. "If you knew him like I know him, Tom..."
He smiled as she rose to her feet and wandered back to the replicator. She flickered her eyes towards the closed door to the aft compartment.
As if reading her thoughts, Tom spoke, "To be a fly on that wall..."
* * *
Chakotay was still staring at her in the unsettling silence.
Kathryn held his stare, her resolve growing stronger with each attempt her three former crewmen made to wrest the truth from her. If those mercenaries had convinced her of one thing, it was of her need to keep them out of this. It was simply too dangerous.
She had held to her silence since her initial stiff greeting with Torres. She'd remain silent until the time came. They couldn't watch her all the time. The second they let their guard down-- near a moon, or a starbase-- she'd be gone. She just prayed the Syndicate didn't catch up with them before that time.
She heard Chakotay sigh across from her.
"Fine." His voice split the silence in the shuttle.
Kathryn made no move to acknowledge he was talking. She looked down at the hands twisted together in her lap.
"Fine," Chakotay repeated. He unwound his large body from the chair and slowly rose to his feet. Hanging back from her a few paces, he set his broad hands on his hips. "You won't tell me about what's happening, and I don't accept it. I don't accept it, but I'll live with it for now."
"How very courteous of you," Janeway drawled, realizing too late that she'd broken her silence.
She watched him cautiously as he stepped away and began to pace, the shuttle light bathing his strong profile in a faint blue.
"But I have to ask you something. I've wanted to ask you this for a while... It's something I didn't understand at the time, and I still don't understand it now."
Her interest was piqued despite herself. "What?"
Chakotay turned to face her, and the anger glittering in his eyes took her breath away. "What was that about? The night of the reunion. Why did you do that to me?"
Janeway looked away from the rage and hurt in his eyes, her mind racing over excuses, trying to think of what she could divulge and what she could not.
He must have read her expression, for he said, "I know there are things you can't tell me. So don't. Just explain what was going on inside your head, Kathryn. I need to know if it meant anything to you or if it was just..." his voice broke off, his expression a rigid mask of control.
"Just what?" Kathryn prompted softly, confusion coloring her voice.
His eyes slipped up to hers, cold and dark. "Just another one of your games."
"My... games?"
The silence hung thick in the air between them.
She stared at him incredulously; he was serious. Her shock suddenly veered towards fury.
"Games?" Kathryn hissed between clenched teeth. "Is that what you think I do? Toy with you? You think I do this for fun?"
His expression hardened. "Don't you?"
Her mouth bobbed open and closed, disbelieving.
Chakotay scoffed. "Don't pretend you're oblivious, Kathryn. You always loved it, didn't you? Pulling my heart on a string. One day smiling, the next day freezing up, one day flirting, the next lecturing about protocol. Was it the only thing you took from us? Did it give you kicks, Kathryn?"
Kathryn's anger grew into a scalding fury, and she shot to her feet. "All those years, Chakotay, everything I felt for you, every time I had to grit my teeth when you fucked one alien slut after another, every time I lay there at night cursing fate for denying me this one emotion... you write off as a game?" she balled her hand up into a trembling fist at her side to keep from slapping the self-righteous ire from his face.
He drew in a sharp breath to retort, but she wouldn't have it.
"'I know you, Kathryn'," Janeway mocked, shooting his old words back at him. "My good friend Chakotay, all those years I thought you cared about me, you saw me as a manipulative bitch!"
"Kathryn--"
She staggered back a little, her rage suddenly fading in the face of an overwhelming hurt. "I loved you. I always did. A game... how can you think that? How can you think I'd do that to you?"
"The night of the reunion, Kathryn!" Chakotay retorted. "You slept with me. No, you made love with me; everything was going to change between us. You said you loved me-- and don't deny it... I heard! You tried to pretend you were asleep, but I heard. And the next morning you announce you're getting married? What was that, Kathryn? What was that if not an active attempt to injure me?"
She felt her eyes begin to sting and she fought it back. "I wasn't trying to hurt you. It was goodbye. Don't you see that, Chakotay? For you, for me-- one time. We could feel everything, all we'd missed, all we'd lost." Her voice dropped to a near whisper. "I thought it would make you happy."
"Happy?" Chakotay sputtered. "Kathryn, you shattered me."
Kathryn saw raw pain in his eyes, the trembling of his hands, and the words died on her lips. She found her eyes riveted to his pain-filled expression in morbid fascination.
"I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep, I couldn't do anything but think about you... Have you ever had your heart broken? Had it ripped from your chest and tossed away like a piece of garbage?" he looked over at her, his eyes shining with his tears. "No, you haven't. And you can't imagine it. You can't know what it's like. It's horrible, Kathryn. It's like a living death."
A living death.
My God.
"I tried to move on after that, God knows how I did, but everywhere I went I saw your face, I heard your voice. Women were nothing more than ghosts next to you. Before the reunion I finally had my life back together, but after you did that, after that night, it was over. It felt utterly meaningless. One place, another, they were all the same. They were all empty."
Her anger was draining away, into another emotion much more devastating. His terrible words whirled through her mind; the night she'd seen as a lifeline, he saw as a curse. For so long, she'd seen it as the one taste of sweetness, the single expression of love for him before she entered her own living death. That night had been wonderful, pure. It was supposed to be a gift. Every terrible moment she'd drawn comfort from the memory, joy from the elusive moment. And the whole time, this act that gave her such pleasure, had given him this terrible anguish. Oh God, she hadn't meant to do that.
"I loved you for so long, Kathryn," Chakotay said jaggedly. "I would have sold my soul for you. I could live before that night without thinking of you every day, every minute, and then... to come so close and then to lose it again..." His voice as bitter when he said, "I wish it had never happened. You-- one night, that night ruined me."
Kathryn stared at Chakotay with horror, the anguish on his face, the defeat in his shoulders, and she was sick-- sick and ashamed. How could this have happened? How could she have misread his feelings so drastically? It wasn't supposed to be this way. She didn't mean to do this to him. She never wanted to hurt him. She hugged her arms around herself, fighting her terrible self-loathing.
She thought of the days, then. All those times she'd comforted himself with the thought of him-- bent over with the nausea from Durant's poison, stretched out on the medical bed after Empek's beatings, smiling to faceless reporters, speaking lies, fleeing her friends, forgetting her family-- Chakotay. The thought of that night. And that night she'd given him this corrosive venom. She'd never seen him this way, looking this way, sounding this way.
Her brief memories of pleasure shattered under the terrible new knowledge.
She sank down mindlessly to the floor, kneeling, her truths exposed as lies, her love shown to be malice. She killed everyone she loved, destroyed everything she held close; and Chakotay, dear Chakotay, Gods what she'd done to him... She'd looked to the one light for so long and it was the light of his torment. And she loved him? And she did this because she loved him?
You ruined me.
It had happened again! She'd poisoned Durant for this, but the whole time, it was not Durant who suffered from her poison but Chakotay. She had done this to him. She put the pain in his eyes, she put the scar on his soul.
She'd been a fool. A damn fool. Now where was she? Trapped in a shuttle? Trying to return to her own living death? She had to go back to Durant now, and she wouldn't have Chakotay to comfort her. He was gone. She'd destroyed it. She deserved Durant. What had she been thinking? How could she have been so blind?
She'd lost. She'd tried so hard to prevent Durant from hurting Chakotay, and she ended up harming Chakotay in his stead. That was it. This was over. It was all over.
Chakotay might have been speaking to her from a distance, and she felt a hand on her arm; she stumbled back from it, on her feet, against the wall. She wasn't entirely sure where she was, what she was doing. Who stood in front of her? or was she dreaming?
Her mouth started moving without her volition. "I didn't mean it to happen that way. I didn't. I never meant to hurt you... You have to believe me, it was different, it was supposed to be--" Her voice broke off, and the blood drained from her face. "I just didn't want to kill them all, but I fucked that up, didn't I? Fucked it all up."
Kathryn laughed a little wildly. "Fuck, in the quarters... that wasn't supposed to happen. Durant... maybe if I'd had time to prepare... But how do you prepare for that? I should have expected it, I know, I knew it was going to happen any day, and it would have been the last blow, but-I- just-couldn't..." her voice broke, and she felt him step towards her. She ripped away, back again.
Kathryn felt the tears running down her face, and she ducked her head from his gaze. "You must think I'm terrible. And it's true! If they could see this now, Seska, Braxton, they'd be right. This is what they saw in me, wasn't it? But sometimes..."
She turned back to him, a little confused. Was he still there? Had he left?
"Sometimes... I think that if I can't escape--just for a while, just for a short time, if I can't get away for a short time I'll die, or I'll tear my hair from my head, scratch my skin into shreds-- and I do, sometimes... and the freedom, going out there, anywhere I want, it makes my head spin and I feel like I'm living... But that's when I realize I have nowhere to go. I can't go anywhere. I have no one left. He's done this to me and now he's all I have. He's my entire world. He made sure of it."
She could see him, staring at her, shock and fear on his face, and it suddenly was absurdly funny. She laughed, an unpleasant, hysterical cackle.
"You think I'm crazy, don't you? It's so easy for you to say, for all of you to say-- Old Janeway's finally lost it. Lost her goddamn mind. I guess it's been a long time coming. But you can't understand. How could you? They're watching me everywhere, hearing everything. Everything I think, everything I feel. Sometimes I think they have eyes in my brain--" she drew her hands up and raked her fingers across her scalp, agitated, "I think they're watching my thoughts... neural synapses, electrical impulses... Are they even safe?"
Her frantic energy faded a bit, and she felt strangely exhausted and drained as she continued disjointedly, "All I can do when I escape is try to go where people are, strangers, faceless. Alcohol helps, but then they smell you and it gets bad. They seem to find me-- predators, I mean-- everywhere I go now... they can tell just looking at you. It's like they tag you and the others find you anywhere, sniff you out like a carcass. Sometimes I wish they'd kill me, and then it wouldn't be my fault. None of it would be my fault anymore. It would be out of my hands."
Her body shook with a sudden, violent sob, and her hands locked over her face. The ground rushed at her suddenly, and then she was suspended midair. Through the cage of her fingers she could see whirling gray. Where had he gone? Maybe he was near her, or by the door, she couldn't tell now. She couldn't move. She felt something, a rope, a chain around her arms, around her neck, and she thought maybe Durant had found her and she thrashed against it madly. Or maybe Empek. Something soft. She clawed at it ferociously, sunk her teeth into it.
"Tom!"
Tom? Tom who? Tom Paris? Tom Thumb? She giggled at the thought, lurching away, and when she felt the cool metal pressing against her neck, her thoughts blurred and she played tag with her sister as a child. she'd (phoebe) cheated. "That's not fair..." katie whined and the world blackened and died.
* * *
"Chakotay?"
The older man did not say anything. He had a fist pressed over his mouth; he was slumped on the floor, his back to the console, his eyes wide and haunted.
"Chakotay?" Tom called again softly.
Chakotay looked at him, utterly shocked and numbed. Paris reached out and gently took the older man's hand, turning it over to heal the tooth marks and the scratches. B'Elanna hovered at the doorway, as baffled as Paris was. She knelt down by Janeway's limp form, checking briefly to make sure she was all right.
"What was that?" B'Elanna asked softly.
Chakotay was staring at Janeway, looking almost shell-shocked. Blinking.
Tom caught B'Elanna's eyes and shook his head briefly. She nodded. He shook his head again, looking meaningfully towards Chakotay. She disregarded his advice and whipped her sharp, brown eyes towards the cockpit. Paris shook his head again, and she socked him on the arm, hard. The blonde pilot shot up and raised his hands in surrender. He reached down, scooped up Janeway, and closed the door behind him.
B'Elanna lowered herself onto the floor across from Chakotay while he sat there, silent and expressionless. She watched him carefully, waiting. After an interminable period of time, his expression crumpled, his eyes squeezed shut, and B'Elanna reached forward to take him into her arms as his shoulders shook with silent tears.
She knew later he'd be embarrassed. In other circumstances, he would swallow it like he always did. But so much was happening for him. She'd seen it in his eyes.
"B'Elanna," he whispered raggedly.
"It's okay, Chakotay," she whispered into his hair, stroking his back.
"I've never seen her like that. I never wanted to see her like that."
"It'll be fine, Chakotay."
"She was insane, B'Elanna. And what she said-- what if she's that way when she wakes, if she's snapped?"
"Shh."
Torres held him stroking his back. He stiffened. "Where is she?"
"Tom has her, in the cockpit."
Chakotay pulled back, began to rise. Torres followed him into the cockpit.
She found her husband crouched by one the chairs, reclined down, Janeway lying there sedated. Chakotay's expression was stormy, but it seemed to ease a little when Tom shot him a smile.
"Look, Chakotay," Paris said, rising to his feet, snapping the tricorder shut. "It looks like she hasn't had a good night's sleep in months, she's severely malnourished, she's stressed as hell, and God knows what she'd hiding from us. I'm guessing you two had a tense moment. So she flipped out on you. It happens to all of us from time to time, maybe not as severe, but hey, with all the crap she's probably going through-- She's not insane, it's nothing permanent, so relax, big guy."
Torres watched Chakotay's shoulders slowly begin to sag in relief.
"There are things... things she said," Chakotay said softly. He stared blankly, seemingly caught in some private thought. Then, looking up at Tom, "Is there.. anything you can give her? Something for anxiety, or what not?"
"I'm not a psychiatrist. I'm guessing all she needs is a good night's sleep," Tom said, then his eyes slipped over to Chakotay. "And so do you. No offense, but you look like shit."
Chakotay shot him a severe look, then turned brusquely towards the back room. "Tell me the minute she wakes up."
"Sure, sure," Paris said quickly.
Torres watched Chakotay leave, then glanced wryly at her husband. "'No offense, but you look like shit'? So tactful, helmboy."
Paris gave her a helpless shrug.
B'Elanna Torres peered towards the back of the shuttle as Tom steered them away from Starbase 13. It had been almost five hours since they'd rescued Janeway and Chakotay, and now that Miral was out of danger, B'Elanna felt herself beginning to relax. She settled in her seat, threw a glance at her husband. "I'm going to replicate some lunch. You want some?"
"Nah. I'm good." Tom's eyes were intent on the console before him. She could tell he was still a little anxious about leaving Miral with one of his father's friends on the starbase.
B'Elanna looked again towards the back of the shuttle. "I'm not sure if I should offer them any. You think Chakotay or skeletor back there will be in the mood for eating?"
Tom snorted a little at that. "Oh, come on, B'Elanna, skeletor?"
"She looks like a goddamn corpse, Tom. You had to see that."
"I did, but if she heard you say that--"
"She won't," Torres reassured him, nudging his shoulder. "For God's sake, Tom."
He sighed and ran his hand through his thinning hair, casting a glance behind him "It's just this whole situation. She didn't say a thing. She just sat in this cockpit the whole trip to Starbase 13 and never said a word. I don't know her. That woman... I just keep waiting to see the captain. "
"Chakotay will find out," B'Elanna said confidently. "If you knew him like I know him, Tom..."
He smiled as she rose to her feet and wandered back to the replicator. She flickered her eyes towards the closed door to the aft compartment.
As if reading her thoughts, Tom spoke, "To be a fly on that wall..."
* * *
Chakotay was still staring at her in the unsettling silence.
Kathryn held his stare, her resolve growing stronger with each attempt her three former crewmen made to wrest the truth from her. If those mercenaries had convinced her of one thing, it was of her need to keep them out of this. It was simply too dangerous.
She had held to her silence since her initial stiff greeting with Torres. She'd remain silent until the time came. They couldn't watch her all the time. The second they let their guard down-- near a moon, or a starbase-- she'd be gone. She just prayed the Syndicate didn't catch up with them before that time.
She heard Chakotay sigh across from her.
"Fine." His voice split the silence in the shuttle.
Kathryn made no move to acknowledge he was talking. She looked down at the hands twisted together in her lap.
"Fine," Chakotay repeated. He unwound his large body from the chair and slowly rose to his feet. Hanging back from her a few paces, he set his broad hands on his hips. "You won't tell me about what's happening, and I don't accept it. I don't accept it, but I'll live with it for now."
"How very courteous of you," Janeway drawled, realizing too late that she'd broken her silence.
She watched him cautiously as he stepped away and began to pace, the shuttle light bathing his strong profile in a faint blue.
"But I have to ask you something. I've wanted to ask you this for a while... It's something I didn't understand at the time, and I still don't understand it now."
Her interest was piqued despite herself. "What?"
Chakotay turned to face her, and the anger glittering in his eyes took her breath away. "What was that about? The night of the reunion. Why did you do that to me?"
Janeway looked away from the rage and hurt in his eyes, her mind racing over excuses, trying to think of what she could divulge and what she could not.
He must have read her expression, for he said, "I know there are things you can't tell me. So don't. Just explain what was going on inside your head, Kathryn. I need to know if it meant anything to you or if it was just..." his voice broke off, his expression a rigid mask of control.
"Just what?" Kathryn prompted softly, confusion coloring her voice.
His eyes slipped up to hers, cold and dark. "Just another one of your games."
"My... games?"
The silence hung thick in the air between them.
She stared at him incredulously; he was serious. Her shock suddenly veered towards fury.
"Games?" Kathryn hissed between clenched teeth. "Is that what you think I do? Toy with you? You think I do this for fun?"
His expression hardened. "Don't you?"
Her mouth bobbed open and closed, disbelieving.
Chakotay scoffed. "Don't pretend you're oblivious, Kathryn. You always loved it, didn't you? Pulling my heart on a string. One day smiling, the next day freezing up, one day flirting, the next lecturing about protocol. Was it the only thing you took from us? Did it give you kicks, Kathryn?"
Kathryn's anger grew into a scalding fury, and she shot to her feet. "All those years, Chakotay, everything I felt for you, every time I had to grit my teeth when you fucked one alien slut after another, every time I lay there at night cursing fate for denying me this one emotion... you write off as a game?" she balled her hand up into a trembling fist at her side to keep from slapping the self-righteous ire from his face.
He drew in a sharp breath to retort, but she wouldn't have it.
"'I know you, Kathryn'," Janeway mocked, shooting his old words back at him. "My good friend Chakotay, all those years I thought you cared about me, you saw me as a manipulative bitch!"
"Kathryn--"
She staggered back a little, her rage suddenly fading in the face of an overwhelming hurt. "I loved you. I always did. A game... how can you think that? How can you think I'd do that to you?"
"The night of the reunion, Kathryn!" Chakotay retorted. "You slept with me. No, you made love with me; everything was going to change between us. You said you loved me-- and don't deny it... I heard! You tried to pretend you were asleep, but I heard. And the next morning you announce you're getting married? What was that, Kathryn? What was that if not an active attempt to injure me?"
She felt her eyes begin to sting and she fought it back. "I wasn't trying to hurt you. It was goodbye. Don't you see that, Chakotay? For you, for me-- one time. We could feel everything, all we'd missed, all we'd lost." Her voice dropped to a near whisper. "I thought it would make you happy."
"Happy?" Chakotay sputtered. "Kathryn, you shattered me."
Kathryn saw raw pain in his eyes, the trembling of his hands, and the words died on her lips. She found her eyes riveted to his pain-filled expression in morbid fascination.
"I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep, I couldn't do anything but think about you... Have you ever had your heart broken? Had it ripped from your chest and tossed away like a piece of garbage?" he looked over at her, his eyes shining with his tears. "No, you haven't. And you can't imagine it. You can't know what it's like. It's horrible, Kathryn. It's like a living death."
A living death.
My God.
"I tried to move on after that, God knows how I did, but everywhere I went I saw your face, I heard your voice. Women were nothing more than ghosts next to you. Before the reunion I finally had my life back together, but after you did that, after that night, it was over. It felt utterly meaningless. One place, another, they were all the same. They were all empty."
Her anger was draining away, into another emotion much more devastating. His terrible words whirled through her mind; the night she'd seen as a lifeline, he saw as a curse. For so long, she'd seen it as the one taste of sweetness, the single expression of love for him before she entered her own living death. That night had been wonderful, pure. It was supposed to be a gift. Every terrible moment she'd drawn comfort from the memory, joy from the elusive moment. And the whole time, this act that gave her such pleasure, had given him this terrible anguish. Oh God, she hadn't meant to do that.
"I loved you for so long, Kathryn," Chakotay said jaggedly. "I would have sold my soul for you. I could live before that night without thinking of you every day, every minute, and then... to come so close and then to lose it again..." His voice as bitter when he said, "I wish it had never happened. You-- one night, that night ruined me."
Kathryn stared at Chakotay with horror, the anguish on his face, the defeat in his shoulders, and she was sick-- sick and ashamed. How could this have happened? How could she have misread his feelings so drastically? It wasn't supposed to be this way. She didn't mean to do this to him. She never wanted to hurt him. She hugged her arms around herself, fighting her terrible self-loathing.
She thought of the days, then. All those times she'd comforted himself with the thought of him-- bent over with the nausea from Durant's poison, stretched out on the medical bed after Empek's beatings, smiling to faceless reporters, speaking lies, fleeing her friends, forgetting her family-- Chakotay. The thought of that night. And that night she'd given him this corrosive venom. She'd never seen him this way, looking this way, sounding this way.
Her brief memories of pleasure shattered under the terrible new knowledge.
She sank down mindlessly to the floor, kneeling, her truths exposed as lies, her love shown to be malice. She killed everyone she loved, destroyed everything she held close; and Chakotay, dear Chakotay, Gods what she'd done to him... She'd looked to the one light for so long and it was the light of his torment. And she loved him? And she did this because she loved him?
You ruined me.
It had happened again! She'd poisoned Durant for this, but the whole time, it was not Durant who suffered from her poison but Chakotay. She had done this to him. She put the pain in his eyes, she put the scar on his soul.
She'd been a fool. A damn fool. Now where was she? Trapped in a shuttle? Trying to return to her own living death? She had to go back to Durant now, and she wouldn't have Chakotay to comfort her. He was gone. She'd destroyed it. She deserved Durant. What had she been thinking? How could she have been so blind?
She'd lost. She'd tried so hard to prevent Durant from hurting Chakotay, and she ended up harming Chakotay in his stead. That was it. This was over. It was all over.
Chakotay might have been speaking to her from a distance, and she felt a hand on her arm; she stumbled back from it, on her feet, against the wall. She wasn't entirely sure where she was, what she was doing. Who stood in front of her? or was she dreaming?
Her mouth started moving without her volition. "I didn't mean it to happen that way. I didn't. I never meant to hurt you... You have to believe me, it was different, it was supposed to be--" Her voice broke off, and the blood drained from her face. "I just didn't want to kill them all, but I fucked that up, didn't I? Fucked it all up."
Kathryn laughed a little wildly. "Fuck, in the quarters... that wasn't supposed to happen. Durant... maybe if I'd had time to prepare... But how do you prepare for that? I should have expected it, I know, I knew it was going to happen any day, and it would have been the last blow, but-I- just-couldn't..." her voice broke, and she felt him step towards her. She ripped away, back again.
Kathryn felt the tears running down her face, and she ducked her head from his gaze. "You must think I'm terrible. And it's true! If they could see this now, Seska, Braxton, they'd be right. This is what they saw in me, wasn't it? But sometimes..."
She turned back to him, a little confused. Was he still there? Had he left?
"Sometimes... I think that if I can't escape--just for a while, just for a short time, if I can't get away for a short time I'll die, or I'll tear my hair from my head, scratch my skin into shreds-- and I do, sometimes... and the freedom, going out there, anywhere I want, it makes my head spin and I feel like I'm living... But that's when I realize I have nowhere to go. I can't go anywhere. I have no one left. He's done this to me and now he's all I have. He's my entire world. He made sure of it."
She could see him, staring at her, shock and fear on his face, and it suddenly was absurdly funny. She laughed, an unpleasant, hysterical cackle.
"You think I'm crazy, don't you? It's so easy for you to say, for all of you to say-- Old Janeway's finally lost it. Lost her goddamn mind. I guess it's been a long time coming. But you can't understand. How could you? They're watching me everywhere, hearing everything. Everything I think, everything I feel. Sometimes I think they have eyes in my brain--" she drew her hands up and raked her fingers across her scalp, agitated, "I think they're watching my thoughts... neural synapses, electrical impulses... Are they even safe?"
Her frantic energy faded a bit, and she felt strangely exhausted and drained as she continued disjointedly, "All I can do when I escape is try to go where people are, strangers, faceless. Alcohol helps, but then they smell you and it gets bad. They seem to find me-- predators, I mean-- everywhere I go now... they can tell just looking at you. It's like they tag you and the others find you anywhere, sniff you out like a carcass. Sometimes I wish they'd kill me, and then it wouldn't be my fault. None of it would be my fault anymore. It would be out of my hands."
Her body shook with a sudden, violent sob, and her hands locked over her face. The ground rushed at her suddenly, and then she was suspended midair. Through the cage of her fingers she could see whirling gray. Where had he gone? Maybe he was near her, or by the door, she couldn't tell now. She couldn't move. She felt something, a rope, a chain around her arms, around her neck, and she thought maybe Durant had found her and she thrashed against it madly. Or maybe Empek. Something soft. She clawed at it ferociously, sunk her teeth into it.
"Tom!"
Tom? Tom who? Tom Paris? Tom Thumb? She giggled at the thought, lurching away, and when she felt the cool metal pressing against her neck, her thoughts blurred and she played tag with her sister as a child. she'd (phoebe) cheated. "That's not fair..." katie whined and the world blackened and died.
* * *
"Chakotay?"
The older man did not say anything. He had a fist pressed over his mouth; he was slumped on the floor, his back to the console, his eyes wide and haunted.
"Chakotay?" Tom called again softly.
Chakotay looked at him, utterly shocked and numbed. Paris reached out and gently took the older man's hand, turning it over to heal the tooth marks and the scratches. B'Elanna hovered at the doorway, as baffled as Paris was. She knelt down by Janeway's limp form, checking briefly to make sure she was all right.
"What was that?" B'Elanna asked softly.
Chakotay was staring at Janeway, looking almost shell-shocked. Blinking.
Tom caught B'Elanna's eyes and shook his head briefly. She nodded. He shook his head again, looking meaningfully towards Chakotay. She disregarded his advice and whipped her sharp, brown eyes towards the cockpit. Paris shook his head again, and she socked him on the arm, hard. The blonde pilot shot up and raised his hands in surrender. He reached down, scooped up Janeway, and closed the door behind him.
B'Elanna lowered herself onto the floor across from Chakotay while he sat there, silent and expressionless. She watched him carefully, waiting. After an interminable period of time, his expression crumpled, his eyes squeezed shut, and B'Elanna reached forward to take him into her arms as his shoulders shook with silent tears.
She knew later he'd be embarrassed. In other circumstances, he would swallow it like he always did. But so much was happening for him. She'd seen it in his eyes.
"B'Elanna," he whispered raggedly.
"It's okay, Chakotay," she whispered into his hair, stroking his back.
"I've never seen her like that. I never wanted to see her like that."
"It'll be fine, Chakotay."
"She was insane, B'Elanna. And what she said-- what if she's that way when she wakes, if she's snapped?"
"Shh."
Torres held him stroking his back. He stiffened. "Where is she?"
"Tom has her, in the cockpit."
Chakotay pulled back, began to rise. Torres followed him into the cockpit.
She found her husband crouched by one the chairs, reclined down, Janeway lying there sedated. Chakotay's expression was stormy, but it seemed to ease a little when Tom shot him a smile.
"Look, Chakotay," Paris said, rising to his feet, snapping the tricorder shut. "It looks like she hasn't had a good night's sleep in months, she's severely malnourished, she's stressed as hell, and God knows what she'd hiding from us. I'm guessing you two had a tense moment. So she flipped out on you. It happens to all of us from time to time, maybe not as severe, but hey, with all the crap she's probably going through-- She's not insane, it's nothing permanent, so relax, big guy."
Torres watched Chakotay's shoulders slowly begin to sag in relief.
"There are things... things she said," Chakotay said softly. He stared blankly, seemingly caught in some private thought. Then, looking up at Tom, "Is there.. anything you can give her? Something for anxiety, or what not?"
"I'm not a psychiatrist. I'm guessing all she needs is a good night's sleep," Tom said, then his eyes slipped over to Chakotay. "And so do you. No offense, but you look like shit."
Chakotay shot him a severe look, then turned brusquely towards the back room. "Tell me the minute she wakes up."
"Sure, sure," Paris said quickly.
Torres watched Chakotay leave, then glanced wryly at her husband. "'No offense, but you look like shit'? So tactful, helmboy."
Paris gave her a helpless shrug.
